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Michael Conley

@mconley.bsky.social

820 followers 630 following 700 posts

Peggy Poole Winner 2022 | Prose: Flare and Falter, Splice | Poetry: These Are Not My Dreams, Nine Pens https://mickconley.substack.com/

mickconley.substack.com

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Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · Aug 9

This nice thing arrived through my door today from @northerngravy.bsky.social - very happy to have some poems in here alongside some familiar names. You can get it here: northerngravy.com/product/poet...

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Reposted by Michael Conley

Samuel Day Wharton @fakeourway.bsky.social · 11h

Had never heard of Selma Asotic, so thank you @tomsnarsky.bsky.social . This poem is amazing.

Tom Snarsky @tomsnarsky.bsky.social · 14h

In my head is a circle farm.

Selma Asotić

Monologue for a second date

Mostly, I stare at the ceiling and think
about how much I don’t want to die. I have a head.
In my head is a circle farm. A woman waves
from a burning roof. There’s also falling
from sixth-floor balconies, windshields,
suicide bombers, stairs, my eyeballs smeared
against the windshield, safety pins, shawls
caught in car wheels, knots, snowdrops.
I have a head. In my head is a stomach
full of butterflies. The butterflies are often sharks
and they want out. I let them out.
They trip on the threshold and smash their teeth.
I have a head. Inside is a living room. A suicide bomber’s
watching syndicated comedy. My head plays
only reruns, cleaner ads, wet floors,
skulls cracked open. Nothing after that. All dark, all
air chastising its emptiness into the thought of you.
I squeeze my eyeballs shut
and think of you. I think of you
in as many ways as the rains falls.

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Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 18h

Matthew Balls

Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 1d

It's not a war, it hasn't ended and splitting it into 'this instance' so that you can say it was started by Hamas is ahistorical and ignorant. People in the UK don't protest against Hamas because the UK government is not funding or supporting Hamas. So, again, you're wrong.

Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 1d

A ceasefire is, by definition, not an 'end to war'. I'm any case, this isn't a war, it's a genocide. Israel killed 5 Palestinians *this morning* despite the so-called ceasefire. Netenyahu and Trump have both been clear and open about their desire to raze Gaza after this. Dont fall for the propaganda

Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 1d

Great news, by the way I have a beautiful bridge to sell you

Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 1d

The best Bronte is Anne and it's not close

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 2d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 1d

I'm ok at it, but at least unlike you I'm not wrong x

Reposted by Michael Conley

Paul Griffiths @disgwylfa.bsky.social · 4d

a page of Krasznahorkai

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Reposted by Michael Conley

Christopher Mathias @letsgomathias.bsky.social · 5d

“The truth is that antifa groups have been responsible for some of the most prescient & impactful organizing countering the far-right during the last decade”

Amazing corrective to liberal punditry abt antifa from Matthew Whitley (& basically the thesis of my book) theintercept.com/2025/09/27/t...

What Liberals Get Wrong About Trump’s Executive Order on Antifa

Liberals dismiss antifa as just an idea. That opens up the activists, researchers, and organizers to a real risk of persecution.

theintercept.com

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Reposted by Michael Conley

Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 9d

Shocked to learn that the world’s preeminent transphobe is also a genocide apologist.

JK Rowling:

"Pro-Palestinian demonstrators couldn’t give it a rest – not even for 24 hours. They were chanting all the old slogans and ducking all the hard questions. ‘Globalise the intifada,’ they cried – does that mean killing Jews in Manchester?" ✍️@NickCohen4

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Reposted by Michael Conley

Kieran Hurley @kieranhurley.bsky.social · 9d

As well as a terrifying extension of repressive state power, it's striking how intellectually dead this is. "You can have freedoms, but only when and if we say so." Ludicrous. We live in an era as stupid as it is evil, governed by moral and intellectual minnows as vapid as they are depraved.

David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 10d

just because you have a freedom "doesn't mean you have to use it at every moment of every day"

Just roll that sentence around your mental palate and taste the underlying logic

Laura Kuenssberg asks if it is a "dark step" to limit the fundamental right to protest?
Mahmood answers that just because you have a freedom "doesn't mean you have to use it at every moment of every day".
Under her new plans people will still have the right to protest, Mahmood adds.

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Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 9d

Good job your respect holds no currency then, knobhead

Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 11d

James, stop trying to make "post literate society" happen. It's not going to happen

a woman wearing a santa hat and holding a lollipop .

ALT: a woman wearing a santa hat and holding a lollipop .

media.tenor.com

Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 11d

You would get put on your arse the greatest day you ever lived, you coward. Keep hiding

Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 11d

You are wrong

Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 11d

Don't be so stupid Robert

Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 11d

So, just vibes then? Sit down and shut up.

Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 11d

Ah, the magical left, who are both clueless and irrelevant morons mostly to be ignored, and also so powerful that they decide who the government is. Thoughts and prayers for your chronic case of brainworms, lib, it must be getting extremely wriggly in there by now

Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 11d

"Why won't these people who I loudly and constantly describe as painfully dumb join a coalition with me?"

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Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 11d

Prioritizing defeating the right is exactly why people won't vote for Labour this time. You, and they, can keep pretending that the colour of the rosette is the only qualifier, but at some point we're all going to need to face up to it

Reposted by Michael Conley

J-T Kelly @j-tkelly.bsky.social · 11d

This is the Brigit Pegeen Kelly poem that I love.
poets.org/poem/leaving

The Leaving
Brigit Pegeen Kelly

My father said I could not do it,
but all night I picked the peaches.
The orchard was still, the canals ran steadily.
I was a girl then, my chest its own walled garden.
How many ladders to gather an orchard?
I had only one and a long patience with lit hands
and the looking of the stars which moved right through me
the way the water moved through the canals with a voice
that seemed to speak of this moonless gathering
and those who had gathered before me.
I put the peaches in the pond’s cold water,
all night up the ladder and down, all night my hands
twisting fruit as if I were entering a thousand doors,
all night my back a straight road to the sky.
And then out of its own goodness, out
of the far fields of the stars, the morning came,
and inside me was the stillness a bell possesses
just after it has been rung, before the metal
begins to long again for the clapper’s stroke.
The light came over the orchard.
The canals were silver and then were not.
and the pond was—I could see as I laid
the last peach in the water—full of fish and eyes.

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Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 11d

Would it fuck

Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 11d

Have you ever been on any of the marches? You're talking out of your fucking arse

Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 12d

To be fair, Lord Walney has a lot of useful things to say about the type of text that is/isn't acceptable to have on your placards at a demonstration. For more information, simply Google "Lord Walney inappropriate texts"

Michael Conley @mconley.bsky.social · 12d

Yeah, great thing to joke about, definitely one of the Good Guys